Eat with us!

So, besides coffee, besides beer, and besides music (to be considered, all must have a minimum standard of excellence), Neil and I also really like good food. The tricky thing with food though, is that we like all genres and stripes in the food spectrum. Obviously, we love tasty, but do we love “excellent” food?

Really, we just love food. We cook a lot, we get our own farm-delivered groceries here in Brooklyn. This new restaurant called Chavella’s opened around the corner from our house, and the food is so good we eat there almost three times a week. When I first met Neil, he watched about fifty million hours of television every day, and I watched zero. Then he showed me the Food Network, and it was all over. From that day on, it was all about making clams casino and home made pesto, and of course having our friends over to rave about how good our food tastes. This is surprisingly easy to do in new york, although I think surrounding yourself with college students and starving artists makes for a particularly appreciative and hungry crowd.

A feast i prepared for my dad’s 60th birthday last fall, with sous-chefs neil and bo randall. Recipes are below.

So I cooked and I cooked and I cooked. I made baked things (also I have made many a world-famous apple pie, but that’s an antique recipe, so no links for that!), I made fried things, I made soups and stews and salads and sandwiches and spanakopita and so many things I never thought I could cook until I tried and they turned out ok! It was this miraculous phase in my life where I thought I would want to cook forever and Neil got fat and happy.

And then I started working in coffee, which is a little like food service. And then I never wanted to be near a kitchen ever again. Well, mostly. Like right now, as I type this. Because, now, Neil is making me macaroni and cheese and a fresh salad. Mmm, lovely. Neil, who I used to jokingly refer to as my “Iron Chef”, has transformed his cooking repertoire from microwaved hotdogs and the donut shop across the street from his house, to a roux-building, recipe following madman, who will take on even the most insurmountable challenges! And, you know, make a good risotto.

This story is all because I wanted to talk about some other foodies that I read about, or know, or am insanely jealous of their cooking or eating adventures. I just found out that one of our regular customers at Joe who writes one such fabulous food blog is having a book published, so a post of congratulations was due. Way to go Adam, o amateur gourmet. Similarly, Jay Caragay who’s always blogging about the food he eats, and who is frequently heard cooking on the portafilter podcast, is someone I’d love to take to Wegman’s and see what’s fresh.

The moral of all this is that a friend is not really a friend until you’ve truly enjoyed a meal with them, be it home made or otherwise. Nothing, really, nothing – and I’m even including the best lattes in the world – beats a delicious, unpretentious meal with the company of your friends. We hope that we’ll have many such meals and culinary adventures as we head west this fall.